Learn an Excerpt From The Parts by John Boyne (Unique)

WATER

The very first thing I do after I arrive on the island is change my identify.

I’ve been Vanessa Carvin for a very long time, 28 years, however I used to be Vanessa Hale for twenty-four years earlier than that and there’s an surprising consolation in reclaiming my birthright, which typically feels as if it was stolen from me.

Then I modify it once more, this time to Willow Hale. Willow is my center identify, and it appears prudent to take an extra step in separating the girl I’m now from the girl I as soon as was, lest anybody right here makes the connection. My dad and mom had been unremarkable, middle-class individuals — a trainer and a store assistant — and there have been some who thought them presumptuous in calling their daughter Vanessa Willow, which summons pictures of a Bloomsbury author or a painter’s wan muse, however I used to be at all times fairly happy with it. I had notions about myself again then, I suppose. I don’t have them any longer.

My subsequent activity is to shave my head. I’ve saved my hair shoulder-length and blonde for so long as I can keep in mind however I bought an electrical razor earlier than leaving Dublin and plug the machine in to cost earlier than easing it round my cranium, experiencing a feverish enjoyment of watching the clumps fall on the ground round my toes. Standing within the cascading tendrils of my femininity, I determine to not make myself completely bald for that will draw an excessive amount of consideration, and I don’t have the top for it anyway, in contrast to the well-known singer, who regarded like one in every of God’s angels when she first appeared on our tv screens. As a substitute, I shear myself all the way down to the uncomplicated blunt crop of a hardworking nation girl, somebody far too busy to concern herself with indulging the bodily.

Shifting from room to room, I see that one thing is lacking, and it takes me just a few moments to understand what it’s: there’s no tv set. I’m not disenchanted. If I’m to dwell this airtight existence, then it’s finest that nothing intrudes upon it. Will probably be a uncommon privilege to be so willfully unaware of the skin world and all its nonsense.

The entrance door is ajar, and a cat marches in, pausing for a second in shock, her entrance proper paw held in mid-air. She stares at me in outrage as if I, and never she, is the intruder.

“I’ve a rental settlement,” I inform her, and her eyes slim at my insolence. “Do you need to see it?”

I hope that she’ll take umbrage at this infringement of her rights and depart however no, she merely emits a resigned meow earlier than making her strategy to the armchair and springing on to it earlier than promptly falling asleep.

With nothing left to do within the cottage, I step again exterior and go searching. It’s a wonderful day, neither chilly nor heat, with out even the whisper of a breeze within the air. There are just a few different homes in sight, each positioned at a ways from mine. A dozen or extra cattle and sheep dot the fields of my closest neighbor, whose farmhouse stands atop a hill. That is the place I dwell now, I say aloud, and my voice doesn’t sound like my very own. Maybe it’s one thing within the island acoustics, an inharmonious assembly level between water, earth, fireplace and air. It’s laborious to consider that I’ve landed in such a spot.

I keep in mind my telephone and return inside to retrieve it from my purse. Opening my messaging service, I scroll to Rebecca’s identify.

I’ve arrived, I inform her. I’m on the island.

After which, regardless of having no purpose to consider this, I add, I feel you’d prefer it right here.

I ship the message and watch as a gray tick seems subsequent to it, then one other. A second later, they flip blue. She’s studying it. A uncommon second after I know precisely what my daughter is doing.

The phrase typing… seems beneath.

However then it disappears.

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The image on her profile vanishes too. I do know what this implies. That she has blocked me. Quickly, no less than. She does this usually, often within the rapid aftermath of my contacting her, however I at all times wake the subsequent day to search out the image restored.

There’s just one thing more I must do earlier than I head to the village and that’s to take the small, framed {photograph} of Emma, Rebecca and I from my suitcase and place it on the desk, in view of the couch. It was taken years in the past when the ladies had been 10 and eight, respectively. Brendan isn’t in it, in fact. If he had been, I’d have burned it. However he stays a presence, after a style, for he should have been the individual behind the digital camera. I contemplate smashing the body on the ground and tearing the {photograph} to shreds, due to his ghostly presence, but when I do that, then I’ll haven’t any photos of my daughters in any respect.

“What do you assume?” I ask the cat, who opens a lazy eye and, as if rethinking her earlier fearlessness, leaps from the armchair and marches out the door. I’m not far behind her.

Excerpted from THE ELEMENTS: A Novel by John Boyne. Printed by Henry Holt and Firm, September ninth 2025. Copyright © 2025 by John Boyne. All rights reserved.

The Parts by John Boyne arrives Sept. 9, and is obtainable for preorder now, wherever books are offered.